SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Diana, Princess of Wales, has been dead for almost three decades, and yet her image, those massive upturned blue eyes, her love for her sons and the public's love for her, it's still everywhere. And just about anything made about her sells, including her brother Charles Spencer's new memoir about Diana called "Swan Song." The fact that Diana is still ever-present makes the book's most talked about revelation - that shortly after her death, then-Prince Charles said, quote, "We'll forget her soon enough" - all the more notable.
There is the phone call that I think has gotten the most attention, where you say that he said - he hissed, as you put it, rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough. How do you square that with a lot of the other contemporary accounts of him being truly upset when he went to Paris to bring her body home and other moments? Do you think both can be true at once, or do you think that from your point of view, he wasn't upset in that moment?
CHARLES SPENCER: That's a good question because, obviously, I wasn't there at Paris. My two sisters were. So I don't know what the reality was there. All I can report, 'cause it is a report of what I saw and heard - in this case, heard. And that's why I put it in, because it furnished part of my eulogy. So my device as the writer is to cobble together the eulogy that I gave at Diana's funeral. And Prince Charles saying to me, we'll forget her soon enough, explains why I end my final sentences that Diana will never be extinguished from our minds. It's a direct counter to what I had heard on that phone call.
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SPENCER: The unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana, whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.
Now, we all know - I'm sure it's the same in the States - but the king as he is now, we know he has a temper, you know? We've seen it when he was grappling with a fountain pen, signing something soon after he became king. So that's what we know. And so I'm not saying that he wasn't deeply upset, 'cause I don't know, but I'm telling you that he said that.
DETROW: Spencer's book covers the press' pursuit of his world-famous sister, her engagement and marriage, and in great detail, it gets into her childhood, including the fact that Spencer believes Diana paid a lifelong price for undiagnosed learning differences.
You're writing - and I hadn't seen this before - that in your opinion, you think that Diana had ADHD, and that contributed to a lot of the struggles that she had in her role. First of all, tell us what you observed, why you thought that could be the case.
SPENCER: Without wishing to sound self-indulgent, I was diagnosed with ADHD in later years, you know? And a lot of the symptoms struck me as absolutely typical of some of Diana's behavior. The empathy - you know, much greater than mine, I must say. But also there is a tendency to take offense quite readily and to react to that. And I saw that, which was very much a part of Diana's makeup. You know, she did recoil from any perceived hurt. Every school report mentions her distraction in class, her interruption of other people's sentences and all of this. None of it held up as terrible behavior, but it does give a picture of somebody who was struggling with undiagnosed ADHD.
DETROW: Do you think - because this is something you touch on again and again, whether at school or later in life - her own feelings of inadequacy, which I think a lot of people have a hard time fully understanding because of the, you know, pedestal that she was put on by so many people in the world. Do you think there was a point in Diana's life where that finally resided (ph) and she finally felt adequate and accomplished and smart in the way that the rest of the world saw her?
SPENCER: I don't. So that's part of my thesis in this book, that being told all the way through your school years that you are somehow less than the rest of the people in your class must have had a devastating effect on her. I also come to the conclusion, you know, which is fairly - it was very obvious that she had this incredible burden from this criticism from teachers about being at the very low end in each subject she studied. How could you not feel that you were somehow inadequate? And it was only after she left school where she truly flourished.
DETROW: The eulogy, as you say, is the theme running throughout the book, and those of us who are old enough vividly remember that eulogy and have in the years since. The line, the part of it that got the most attention and stuck with people the most, was your passionate promise to look out for William and Harry.
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SPENCER: On behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.
DETROW: I'm wondering what that looked like over the ensuing decades. Tell us how you carried out that vow in the days since then.
SPENCER: Yes, so as you touched on, that was a vow made on behalf of Diana's family. I think it was a hope that we could somehow help foster the imaginative and caring way in which she had raised them. People knew that Diana had brought something really unusual and soft and generous into the life of two royal princes. Diana was able to insist that things were done in a modern way, whether it was taking them on public transport, standing in line properly for their turn at an amusement park or whatever and taking them out for a burger. It sounds very basic, but these things had not really been allowed to royal princes and princesses growing up in previous generations. And I think there was a general concern that I was reflecting that day that they needed this side of things to continue to connect with the modern world in a way that probably hadn't happened in previous generations.
DETROW: I do want to ask, as much as you feel you can share with the public, do you think William and Harry's relationship would be any different if Diana were still alive?
SPENCER: Well, I guess, with the whole, you know, if Diana was still alive, there's so many unknowns. I just don't know. You know, when families fall out, it's so personal and there's so many things going on. From the outside, even in a family, you can see the jagged edges of a fracture, but you don't see the finer shards that have slipped away. And there's so many things that only the two principals involved will know has upset them so deeply. So I wouldn't want to be as impertinent as to suggest I know a solution. What I can say as Diana's brother is that she would really not have wanted her boys to be separate. That's very obvious. No mother would. So I can - I'm not avoiding the question. I can only answer it as I see it.
DETROW: This is a book of memories, and I'm wondering what your favorite memory of Princess Diana is. There's a lot of painful ones you encounter, but what is what is your favorite memory of your sister?
SPENCER: Her laugh. She could really laugh. I mean, she had the best sense of humor. The first sort of 20 years after she died, when something absurd or ridiculous happened, I would think, oh, I must tell Diana. And I think a lot of your listeners who've lost a very close person to them will know that amputation, and you forget about it.
DETROW: Yeah.
SPENCER: So yeah, it's her humor generally. Not a particular incident. There were so many. But she was really funny.
DETROW: Charles Spencer, author of "Swan Song," a new book about his sister, Princess Diana, thank you so much for talking to us.
SPENCER: Thank you, Scott.
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